Richard Wagamese

He has been writing professionally since 1979. In the beginning he was a print journalist then moved to radio for a few years. Television came along in the late 1980s. But his heart has always been with the printed word. In 1991 he became the first Native Canadian to win a National Newspaper Award for Column Writing while he was with the Calgary Herald.

With an old 256 computer, he stayed in a friend's basement and wrote what would become his first novel, Keeper'n Me. It was published in 1994 and to date has sold over 24,000 copies. He was honored with the Alberta Writers Guild Best Novel Award for that story.